NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2003 Nov 09 @ 13:00UTC-5 : EST/CDT
<b>301. WILLIAM SAROYAN</b> (1908 - 1981) American author and playwright of such pieces as <i>The Time of Your Life</i> (Pulitzer Prize winner) and <i>The Human Comedy</i>. An extraordinary archive of letters spanning all of Saroyan's career as a writer from 1934 until the year of his death, 1981. The collection includes 36 T.L.S.'s and four A.L.S.'s, about half signed in full, the balance as "<i>Bill</i>", 54pp., most 4to., from various locations, with many written to his illustrator, Don Freeman. The letters contain a wealth of fine content, in small part: <i>"...[Nov. 1, 1934]...you have no idea how many things a new writer must do: he must write a novel, he must meet people, he must talk, and all of it very pointless...[Feb. 14, 1938]...a reviewer's first job is to tell the truth about a book [from a review of his own book!]...[Aug. 7, 1938]...I hope you have decided to use The Grapes...[Dec. 7, 1938]...Between drinks I have thought about a title for the Department...the general title: The Saroyan Department...[Dec. 1, 1940]...I was up to San Quentin last Sunday with Artie Shaw who played for the five thousand or more problem children up there and they're really great people...Thanks a lot for doing the sketch for...'Here Comes Aram'...Some of my best loafing has turned out to be some of my best writing...[Mar. 8, 1941]...Here is a little piece entitled How I Met Joe Gould...the play is opening here this coming Thursday and I want to tighten it up...[May 21, 1942]...Harcourt Brace is bringing out the story I wrote for moving pictures: namely: The Human Comedy. They are getting it into the novel form...I have written to Harcourt urging them to have this book illustrated by you...One of the principal characters of the Human Comedy is a kid even younger than Aram, but pretty much like him, named Ulysses - Ulysses Macauley...[May 23, 1942]...I have had pretty good luck here since I left Hollywood - one new play: Get Away Old Man...I'm pleased as hell that you feel enthusiastic about doing the illustrations for The Human Comedy. I have just finished the original copy...[Apr. 25, 1944 to MGM]...I do still feel that if I had been on hand `The Human Comedy' would have been a truly great film - a new departure...in the whole development of films, instead of a not quite satisfying film to anybody, and to me a painful one...it [another Saroyan film] does `stink', as you and Mr. Mayer put it...No man who accepts a job and flunks at it ever has an excuse...the film rights, which I sold for a cabbage because I was so desperately in need of money...I'll be damned if I'll `sell' the rights. You can only `rent' the rights to any work of mine...[Mar. 2, 1946]...Is Loew's Inc. interested in selling back to me motion picture rights in my novel `The Human Comedy'?...my favorite picture of them all was used as an emblem for The Human Comedy...we ought to try to get something a little more varies and complex - and away from the `chiled'...I sent a well edited copy of Don't Go Away Mad to [Louis B.] Mayer...[Jan. 19, 1949 to Clifford Odets]...I have lost interest in the Broadway theater as it now functions and not long ago turned over all of these plays to Sam'l French for release to amateurs...[Jan. 4, 1950 to MGM]...Don't Go Away Mad could be made for beans and would be an absolute classic...[Dec. 10, 1950]...Most films as you know make falsity fairly effective...[the best film style] combines decent resignation to the bitter truth about ourselves and our world with quiet if not humorous faith in the virtue of decent effort at all times...We can't bluff much any more, we can dream but even dreaming has got to be situated in truth and reality...[Aug. 27, 1957]...It really doesn't matter what you call any creative work, provided it is effectively like music that is music, and that includes Varese's Deserts...[July 30, 1968]...I renewed the copyright in The Time of Your Life in 1966...great big rich publishing houses (lately actually owned by beer money or bankery money or the mafia) try to get by on sums that are more like handouts than royalty payments...[Sep. 18, 1970]...many people who have read...Loony Bin...felt that I must be dying - and of course this is not untrue...I have always had a profound sense of the fragility and finiteness of not only human beings, but all things...[Aug. 25, 1971]...Everyone keeps rejecting Another Aram, but I swear it's all right. My next is at Praeger and comes out in March: Places Where I Have Done Time...[Jan. 13, 1981]...the national catchphrase is Have a nice day. Why not [a] million dollars? Or, tomorrow? Or maybe yesterday?...</i>". There is much more fine literary and personal content in this archive, far more that we could hope to quote here. This collection should be viewed! Overall very good to fine condition. Also included three letters by <b>ARAM SAROYAN</b> and one letter from <b>LUCY SAROYAN</b>.<b> $3,000-5,000</b>
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